The Rook

‘The body you are wearing used to be mine.’

So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is, Myfanwy must follow the instructions in a series of letters her former self left behind to discover her identity and track down the agents who want to destroy her.

She soon learns that she is a Rook, a high-ranking member of an MI5ish secret organisation called the Checquy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain (who knew?). She also discovers that she possesses a rare, potentially deadly supernatural ability of her own.

In her quest to uncover which member of the Checquy betrayed her and why, Myfanwy encounters such wacky folk as a person with four bodies, an aristocratic woman who can enter her dreams, a secret training facility where children with bizarre traits are transformed into Checquy operatives, and a conspiracy more vast than she ever could have imagined. Filled with fantastical characters and over-the-top action, THE ROOK is a richly inventive, suspenseful, and often wry thriller that marks an ambitious debut from a promising young writer.

About the Author

Dan O′Malley was born and schooled in Canberra. After studying world history and medieval history in American universities, he returned to Australia in 2004. He now works for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, handling communications connected with investigations of plane crashes and runaway boats. THE ROOK is his first published novel.

Reviewed By Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor

To read more reviews by Toni Whitmont, click here to visit the Booktopia Newsletter Archive.

While The Cartographer is wonderfully idiosyncractic and unmistakenly Australian, Daniel O'Malley's slick debut novel The Rook has international best seller written all over it. Having dipped into it recently, I quickly found myself devouring it. Page turner is definitely accurate. And what an opening line - The body you are wearing used to be mine. I have trawled around the reviews for this one. Here is a sampler of the comments:

This is the only debut novel on this list, and it's a monster... The Rook snapped my head around. It's utterly convincing and engrossing - totally thought-through and frequently hilarious. The writing is confident and fully fledged. Even this aging, jaded, attention-deficit-disordered critic was blown away.

Lev Grossman, Seven Books I'm Looking Forward to in 2012, TIME Entertainment Daniel O'Malley's contribution to the growing field of high-octane paranormal spy thrillers is filled with smart flourishes....O'Malley keeps a humorous edge...without diminishing the threat level....Very few of the plot developments are obvious, and the ones that are don't undermine the suspense....There's some wiggle room for a sequel, but The Rook stands on its own as an entertaining integration of paranormal flash with watertight espionage narrative.
Ron Hogan, Shelf Awareness.

Secret agents as Rooks and Pawns? Plausible, since Checquy Group is a paranormal version of Britain's MI5....O'Malley's narrative is peppered with sly humor, referential social commentary and the ironic, double-layered self-awareness that will have genre fans believing Buffy the Vampire Slayer has joined Ghostbusters...No clairvoyance required to recognize there will be more outlier reports from Myfanwy, Rook of the Checquy.
Kirkus

This Australian author's first novel adroitly straddles the thin line between fantasy, thriller, and spoof.

The book has, in approximately equal measures, an X-Men vibe (the Checquy Group runs a boarding school for gifted youngsters) and a Tom Holt vibe (the story is about an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary world and scrambling to play catch-up). O'Malley is a nimble writer, effortlessly leaping back and forth between comedy and action. There's plenty of room here for a sequel that readers will no doubt begin clamoring for before they've even finished this book.
David Pitt, Booklist

First-time novelist O'Malley has fashioned a near-perfect supernatural thriller. The heroine is appealing, the villains all monsters or freaks, and something unexpected happens on almost every page.
David Keymer, Library Journal

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The Rook

A Novel

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